June 22,  Location:  Turpan  42° 56’N 89° 11’ E, elevation 30 metres, riding day #33, 100m climbing, 96 km today, 4264 total to date.

We are in the “Death Valley” of China, it can get extremely hot here in the summer.  Part of our ride today had us below sea level, down to -50m elevation.  Luckily it was an overcast day, hence didn’t get really hot.

Turpan seems like a wonderful place, we rode in down some 6 long blocks that were totally trellis covered with grape plants, both the center street and walkways on both sides.  Had (2^nd) lunch today at John’s Place, a place that caters to Westerners, English menu, includes things like coffee (instant), fries (quite good) and burgers (didn’t try, but don’t think that good).

The tour medic wanted me to see a doctor re the Hernia, so along with another "patient" off to the hospital we went.  We both had to buy "tickets" to see a Doctor.  The ticket cost 2.5 yuan, i.e. $0.50, then advice of the doctor was the same as the doctor that is riding - no heavy lifting, but other than that carry on.  So whilst being very careful, I will carry on.  The other patient has an ankle problem and it involved a scan - happened immediately with the doctor watching and cost approx $24. 

A couple of pics:

Our dinner at a street vendor:

Wine tasting in Turpan, two were excellent, one awful:

I love the colourful dresses - in the Turpan market:

Very common, father driving the small farm truck, wife, grandmother and child in back:

This is a raisin factory, i.e. these are grape drying sheds, 100+ of them.  With irrigation, there is a large amount of land under cultivation, I sense this is the grape centre of China.  All the dried fruits I have been getting at the markets have been wonderful, many kinds of raisins, dates, figs, apricots, and a lot of other things, all are really good, but not sure what they are. 

Yes, eating French fries with chop sticks:

June 22,  Location:  Farmers field camp/Hotel  42° 54’N 90° 13’ E, elevation 420 metres, riding day #32, 500m climbing, 149 km today, 4168 total to date.

I rode the full ride today, felt absolutely fine, no hints of a return of the hernia.  Yes, I need to be very careful, no heavy lifting etc., and I think I’ll be able to use this to get out of doing camp dishes…  Very hot, when we got to our camp site, even though I waited till after 5:00 to set up my tent, I was just dripping in sweat, then…

Around 5:30, the police arrived, various conversations, another car with police.  We were told to move.  Due to the recent problems between the Gov’t and Uyghur’s, it appears the local police don’t want anything that would attract anything to there area, so “move along…”.  So we had dinner, then packed up, still really hot, dripping in sweat, a truck for the bikes and 8 taxi’s arrived and off we went.  The good news is that we are now in a very nice 4 star hotel, in a town called Shansan.  The rates were much more reasonable than I expected, 288 Yuan or about $45CDN/room.  Appears to be the centre of a lot mining activity, lots of heavy equipment around.

June 22,  Location:  Cricket Camp  43° 23’N 92° 03’ E, elevation 1591 metres, riding day #31, 250m climbing, 73 km today, 4019 total to date.

Bad day today.  First thing in the morning, I had packed up and biffed my heavy oversize duffle bag onto my back, then grabbed my bike and started to leave the hotel room – rear tire on the bike was flat – crap.  Hustled the pack and bike down to the lobby and took off the rear tire, then scrambled back to the room to use the sink to source the leak, then fixed the flat.  Somewhere during that period I felt a small twinge in my lower abdomen.  Had a partial bad breakfast and got on the road, all was not well, lower gut pain.  I persisted for the 73k to lunch – something was wrong.  Initially I thought some sort of bug, however whilst sitting at lunch, not really eating I happened to put my hand on my lower abdomen – egg size hernia!  Shortly after, Sylvie, the anesthetist from Montreal arrived – after a bit of antics she worked the hernia back into me.  So at this point I am mostly OK, actually feeling very good, however I am not allowed to lift my bag or anything heavy.  The plan at this point is to simply carry on - normal bike riding should not be a problem.  We’ll see how things go over the next while.

Will keep you posted.